


Miles from Where You Are

by alionheart



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Academy Era, Angst, Enterprise, Ghost!Spock, Ghosts, Heavy Angst, M/M, Pining, Roommates, Soulmates, Starfleet Academy, academy au, ghost au, spirk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 20:59:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3182975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alionheart/pseuds/alionheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James T. Kirk doesn't think he'd be desperately lonely without the silent, steadfast Vulcan roommate by his side.  But lives take unexpected turns, and their first mission together goes sideways, and Jim is left to scrap his first year aboard the Enterprise with a friend who is more than a ghost but less than alive.  And Jim is not the kind of Captain who easily lets go of a friend, even if the staying pushes him into a darker place than he's ever been before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Miles from Where You Are

**Author's Note:**

> AU; academy and first year aboard the enterprise. Not technically slash in that there will not be specifically romantic content, but I am using the t'hy'la and soulmate concepts, so read into it what you will. 
> 
> How I do trigger warnings: (entire fic): self harm, major angst, language, alcohol, violence, major character death. Nothing too graphic or explicit. I will warn for anything particularly significant at the beginning of each chapter.
> 
> I'll hopefully update every week or two, especially if this gains traction and gets read.
> 
> Written for my dear friend illuminirk on tumblr, (and partially based off an au that we headcanoned.)
> 
> Prologue warnings: None. This part is entirely fluff and set up.

James Tiberius Kirk is thoroughly hyped by the time eight am rolls around on the first day of his last year at Starfleet. It’s mandatory for seniors to wear uniforms at all time, so unlike previous years, he can’t get away with something more comfortable, aka some band t-shirt and dress pants, his jacket slung over his shoulder and rarely worn in the warm San Francisco weather. Today, however, he’s dressed properly, his only consolation for the uncomfortable fabric being as he looks in the mirror and mutters “look damn good in this, don’t you think." 

Spock doesn’t hear, as usual, but as Kirk is running out the door of the apartment, monster drink in one hand, coffee in the other, the half Vulcan stops him.  
“Leaving like that, Captain?” Spock says, lip curling in a smile as Jim winks at him for the nickname. Looking down at himself, Jim sees the splotch of cream cheese that’s dropped from the bagel clamped in his mouth to land in a white splotch on his half buttoned jacket. Spock stares at him silently for a second as Jim tries to figure out how exactly to hold the door, put down his drinks, and fix the mess without making a greater one. As things generally go, he doesn’t have much of a hope. Except that Spock is around this morning, having no early classes. Jim curses himself for registering for 7am classes (all damn semester, I’m going to be getting up before the freak of dawn), but thinks positively that at least he will see Spock in the mornings in between his roommate’s green-tea wakeup beverage at 6:45 and his 7:30 meditation session. 

Jim tries to lean over to balance the coffee cup on the end table, but it splatters and he jerks to keep it from falling altogether. Spock ends up helping him, of course, turning up his nose at the monster drink as he takes it gingerly from Jim’s one hand and then the coffee from the other. Jim licks his finger and swipes at the cream cheese on his jacket, rubbing it away till it’s merely a small grease spot. Spock quirks up one eyebrow and Jim shrugs.  
“It’s our last semester, Spock, do they really care? We’re graduating Starfleet with honours, headed for our own deep space postings….” Spock quirks his eyebrow again, this time with a sideways look at the clock, “I fail to see how…”  
“Hello! Gotta run, thanks Spock, same time for lunch?” Jim grabs the drinks from Spock’s hands and doesn’t bother to wait for the reply. He knows Spock will be in his normal place between classes, as he has every lunch for the past three years of their time in Starfleet together. 

As he bolts down the steps of their apartment and across the green to his first class, he pours the coffee into the energy drink bottle and shakes it up. Testing it, he grimaces at the flavour but nods approvingly at the temperature before taking a large gulp. He’ll need it to keep awake in this class. Last night was late, and it’s not his fault that someone in dorms decided to throw an all night party to celebrate their last year in Starfleet. Even if it was illegal. Even if Spock did track him down by two am to, as Spock said, “convince you to prioritize your studies by retiring to sleep at a semi-appropriate hour”, and which Jim called “hauling my ass to bed and tucking me in.”  
They’ve known each other for nearly three years (the same amount of time Jim has been at Starfleet), roommates for two, and Jim’s still not exactly sure how that went down. At least whenever Spock has asked. Privately, he knows that hacking Starfleet computers should not be as easy as he found it, and finding “S’chn T’gai Spock” and registering him to room with “Kirk, James Tiberius”, was not only against regulation but probably Spock would have taken it as an invasion of privacy….  
Jim doubts Spock really cares at this point, though, even if rooming with “Kirk, James Tiberius” means you spend a great deal of time dragging him to bed and out of bed, making him eat more than cheeseburgers and monster drinks, and sitting up with him through lengthy panic attacks several times per month.  
Jim apologizes quite often for the bedtimes, less often for the eating habits, and he never mentions the panic attacks. They don’t happen as much as they used to. That’s due to Spock.

Jim owes quite a lot to Spock.  
Of course, Spock has said the same about Jim, not in so many words. More often, it’s “Your omelettes are quite satisfying, Jim”, and “Thank you for your assistance in my research project, it yielded a satisfactory grade”, and “I express my gratitude to you for your expenditure of your time in a competitive activity that you lose 86.3% of the time.”  
Really, what Spock means, and Jim has learned to translate, is that Spock had very few friends in his first year at Starfleet, even less once he began opening his mouth, and Jim has kept him from sheer, human loneliness, dragged him to social events, and kept him from isolating himself completely.  
Jim suspects that Spock keeps a lot of secrets about how bad it really was that first year without Jim, but he’s learned not to pry, that the future is more important than the past, and that Spock isn’t anything less than satisfied with their current arrangement. Maybe even happy. Yes, definitely happy. At least that’s how Jim translates it.


End file.
